Tuesday, January 23, 2007

F1 Cloning Controversy Continues

As previously noted the Formula 1 Team Bosses met in Monaco late last year to discuss the still smoldering issue of teams planning to use “cloned” copies of their big brother’s racing cars…

The team with the most to loose is naturally Spyker, whom as one of or perhaps the only privateer team left is currently forced to produce its own chassis since it doesn’t have any links to manufacturer’s or rich team owners…

After the meeting Spyker asked all of the Constructors to sign a letter of intent to uphold the current Concorde agreement which doesn’t expire until the end of the 2007 season. This in turn decrees that each Constructor will produce its own chassis that isn’t a watered down version of another team’s leftover rolling stock which both Scuderia Toro Rosso and Super Aguri plan to campaign in 2007…

Both teams have arrived at different methods to utilize
Existing variants of their major supporters while using different loopholes to circumvent the Concorde agreement. While super Aguri has gone to the trouble of setting up a third party design firm Toro Rosso seems intent on denying any wrong doing…

Interestingly Mario Theissen has recently spoken out against the subject of chassis “Platform engineering” in F1. Theissen makes a valid point towards this rule change leading towards the possibility of an all manufacturer’s championship. In the future Formula 1 could end up with just the current six manufacturer’s each campaigning squads of 4 “cloned” chassis and the death of true independent “Privateers.” Will we see “B” Teams blocking for their corporate backer’s designated numero uno driver?

Although it has long been a time honored tradition for Auto manufacturer’s to simply buy Formula 1 teams and rebrand them instead of creating a team from scratch, is this just the next evolutional step of Formula 1?

Meanwhile adding “Fuel to the Fire,” was Anthony Davidson who posted the fasted day’s time in testing at Valencia last week…

Yes, I had to do a double take as all of the headlines shouted Super Aguri FASTEST… When has a “Super Best Friends” ever lead anything except the race for the final row on the grid? And yet “ANT” posted a time ahead of the two brand new Renault R27’s…